According to the Daily Mail, LivesOn is being developed by London -based advertising agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine.

Dave Bedwood, a creative partner at the firm, told the Guardian he was ready for negative responses to the service.

He said that it divides people on a gut level, before you even get to the philosophical and ethical arguments.

Although the app is similar to the plot of last week's episode of Channel 4 sitcom Black Mirror, in which a woman uses social media to talk to her dead boyfriend, the developers claim they came up with the service in 2011.

This allows it to scour the internet to post the kinds of links its users like, as well as mimic their manner of communicating and favourite appropriate tweets to create a personal digital afterlife, the report said.

LivesOn is the first service to offer to automatically continue posting in the style of the dead user, however.

One person who has registered interest in the service is Mia Smith, a businesswoman in her mid-40s, who said she wanted the chance to have a 'kind of ironic legacy', the report added.